How Yamaha WaveRunner Destroyed Kawasaki's Jet Ski Empire

The word is a trademark. Every machine you have ever seen throwing a rooster tail across a summer lake, every rental on every beach, every one your neighbor tows behind his truck, you call it a jet ski. That name belongs to Kawasaki. It is a registered trademark, and Kawasaki has fallen to the bottom of the market that carries its name. Dead last. Behind Yamaha. Behind Sea-Doo. The company that owns the word owns almost none of the thing. It was not always this way. For roughly sixteen years, from October of nineteen seventy two until nineteen eighty eight, the Kawasaki Jet Ski is the only commercially successful personal watercraft on Earth. Not the leader. The entire market. There is no second brand. There is no competitor. There is one machine, and it is a Kawasaki, and its name becomes the word for the whole sport.